The Holocaust History Project is pleased to be able to offer Jean-Claude Pressac's seminal work on Auschwitz entitled Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers. Although Pressac was at one time a revisionist, and associated with the denier Robert Faurisson, he saw the light after undertaking an in-depth examination of almost everything to do with Auschwitz. He tells the story of his conversion in a Postface beginning at page 537 of his book.

Pressac's analysis is at once exhaustive and convincing. It is based on primary documents and testimonies, original architectural plans, photographs, drawings, worksheets, and schematics. A particularly powerful analysis is found in Chapter 8 of Part Two, entitled "One proof ... one single proof". Thirty nine criminal traces, beginning at page 429. Pressac's book is a definitive proof of the use of poison gas to murder Jews at Auschwitz and it is based on primary sources from the Nazis. There is no doubt.

We are indebted to the Beate Klarsfeld foundation, holder of the copyright for Pressac's book, for permission to reproduce it on our website. And we are especially indebted to our THHP colleague and founding member Harry W. Mazal OBE, who was able to secure that permission for our site, as well as his own. Several THHP volunteers devoted countless hours to scanning, coding and HTMLing these pages.

This copyrighted material is presented exclusively for use by our readers to assist in their research. The material may not be copied, downloaded or placed on another web site without the express permission in writing from the Holocaust History Project. Special requests may be addressed to our Linkmaster

Please respect these conditions.

Pressac's original effort resulted in a massive and unwieldy 564-page book measuring 12" x 18" (30 x 45 cms). The original run was limited to 1,000 copies making it very difficult to obtain. It costs up to one thousand dollars or more in today's used book market. Because of the unwieldiness of Pressac's large pages, our volunteers have reformatted each page to a more comfortable 700 pixel wide centered format, this page being an example. The change in format has been designed to flow naturally, page by page, with all of the illustrations and charts in the original book. The original scans may be viewed at any time by clicking on the thumbnail icon at the top of each page. These are very large files recommended only for readers with broadband connections.

We have taken certain editorial liberties with the format of the text. Pressac variously refers to publications using different formats. These include: "Title"; "Title"; Title; Title; Title; Title, etc. We have standarized the references by using the MLA Style handbook. In the presentation of our electronic text these references will uniformly read: Title.

Similarly, Pressac employs italics and bold text to emphasize certain words or phrases. The electronic version of the book will use bold text exclusively for emphasis, reserving the italics for the cases where Pressac quotes words or texts by others. When Pressac calls for emphasis in these quoted texts, we will use bold italics. Similarly italics will be used in some cases where languages other than English are used, and [italics] when referring to key documents.

Pressac often refers to images or texts that appear on different pages than the one on the screen. For ease in reading and viewing, we have hyper-linked those references to the appropriate page or image. Simply clicking on that link will open a new browser window allowing the reader to view that text or image alongside the original page. This second window may be closed at any time without losing the original page.

Like any endeavor of this magnitude we are bound to have made mistakes and/or omissions. We request that you report these to our Linkmaster.

We hope you will enjoy and learn from this very important book and we invite your comments.